"At some level, all portraits are propaganda, political or personal. And what makes this one distinctive is the personal part. [The artist Kehinde] Wiley has set Mr. Obama against — really embedded him in — a bower of what looks like ground cover. From the greenery sprout flowers that have symbolic meaning for the sitter. African blue lilies represent Kenya, his father’s birthplace; jasmine stands for Hawaii, where Mr. Obama himself was born; chrysanthemums, the official flower of Chicago, reference the city where his political career began, and where he met his wife."

Writes the art critic Holland Carter at the NYT, where you can see the portrait, which is kind of interesting, especially if you like your President well embedded in foliage.

Now, the portrait of Michelle Obama, on the other hand — by a different artist, Amy Sherald — is a lot worse. And I'm not saying that because I need a lot of leaves and flowers in official portraits or because it's mostly blue background and huge geometrically patterned skirt. It's that the face is such a small part of the thing and it doesn't look like her.

As Holland Carter puts it:

The dress design, by Michelle Smith, is eye-teasingly complicated: mostly white interrupted by black Op Art-ish blips and patches of striped color suggestive of African textiles. The shape of the dress, rising pyramidally upward, mountain-like, feels as if it were the real subject of the portrait. Mrs. Obama’s face forms the composition’s peak, but could be almost anyone’s face, like a model’s face in a fashion spread. To be honest, I was anticipating — hoping for — a bolder, more incisive image of the strong-voiced person I imagine this former first lady to be, one for whom I could easily envision a continuing political future.

157 comments:

Obama was more than philosophically detached. He was managerially detached, which is why he only ever heard about bad things from the television.

Or he was a liar. Either or.

On the actual portrait: I like when artists hide nuggets like the imagery/meaning of the flowers. Like all the old portraits with books and fruits to imply things about the subject. It's just good artistry.

You were the first person I thought of when I happened to see Michelle's portrait unveiled today. It reminds of me old-fashioned portraits that left the face blank, to be filled in when a commission was accepted. It truly bears very little resemblance to her. The dress is really cool, but the face doesn't resemble the former First Lady, and the hands/shoulders/face seem out of proportion to each other.

The color palette reminds me of putting a weird Instagram filter on a photo. It's so cold that it is off-putting. And it seems to turn her skin color almost ashen. I didn't like her, but this portrait isn't worthy of her. "Wow" is the only appropriate reaction here, I think.

Yeah. Looking at the face on Michelle's portrait, I don't recognize her, and I'm not sure if I ever recall seeing her hair like that. The focus of the piece seemed more on the dress than the person, which would've been fine if there was meaning in the dress, but it sounds like it was just a fashion design. Putting her in blue space also de-emphasizes any grounding of the subject, again making me think, "I should be looking at the dress."

It seems like this would have been an opportunity for Althouse to read a piece (not to mention the associated comments, if there are any) and look for angles re her jabbering about how she (supposedly) opposes DJT being tied into everything (i.e.precisely what she'd be doing herself).

Remember the controversy over Peter Hurd's portrait of LBJ? Johnson refused to accept it, calling it "the ugliest thing I ever saw." Hurd sent the painting out on tour. I remember my parents taking me to see it at a radio station in an nearby town. I looked at it just now, and it's a lot better portrait than either of the Obamas'.

Does anyone have a PC decoder. What is the author of the article trying to say here. The Obama's identify has having African ancestors. Some other presidential couple refused to claim their African ancestors.

I didn't want to waste one of my limited accesses to the Times but found the portraits over at BusinessInsider.com. That has to be to worst background for a presidential portrait since forever. Also his hands look too large for his arms. Agree about Michelle's portrait -- whoever it is, it's not her. Wrong hairdo, and where's her trademark snarling expression?

And Obama was not "philosophically detached" -- he was in on every single abuse of his office (ignoring the War Powers Act in Libya, weaponizing the IRS against the Tea Party, spying on the Trump campaign, Hillary's Email server, the infamous Title IX "preponderance of the evidence) right up to his eyeballs.

The Obama portrait isn't terrible (and the standard of presidential portraiture is not especially high anyhow), but it's kind of flat. I mean, there's no depth to the foliage at all. If the artist was going to go that direction, I don't know why he didn't just go full Klimt.

Mike's has a Gauguin vibe, although the pose is very feminist. Makes her look better and more alluring than she is. I must say I like it.

Zippy's is a different person, not our little Barry. He was never that intense or thoughtful (thoughtless, usually). And the shrubbery looks like it's taking over, like the jungle at Tikal once the Mayans left.

I think Michell's portrait nails the disapproving look she generally carried around with her while going around the country. She does not like us. And by 'us' I mean you- all of you. Her country, the people in it. After awhile that look just stays. I think the artist captured her look, but not the details of her face.

Obama in real life was detached. And honored for it. People bestowed their best wishes and hopes onto him. He didn't even have to speak. He got a Nobel Prize just for...being. People swooned at his speeches, which carried steroidal levels of pap and mushiness. They heard from him what they wanted to hear. Most of the press still does. He's really a blank slate. I suspect he's sitting there thinking..."do I have any Cheetos at home, or do we need to stop and get some on the way home?"

That's a more conventional portrait, but the colours make it seem a little too reminiscent of the Kennedy portrait. Maybe that's the idea, though -- give him a little bit of the reflected lustre of so-called "Camelot."

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's sizeBut when I start to tell them,They think I'm telling lies.I say,It's in the reach of my armsThe span of my hips,The stride of my step,The curl of my lips.I'm a womanPhenomenally.Phenomenal woman,That's me.

Best guess for this image: cartoonAll else aside, one thing always bugged me about Michelle was wearing wigs. All the pro black positive stuff coming from her seems that going natural would have been a plus. One photo of her on treadmill with no wig was described as having her hair pulled back(or something), avoiding fact she wears wigs.Nothing wrong with wearing a wig, but seems poor black women hard pressed to afford it. Maybe they are not as expensive as I think?

I give a A+ for the Barack one, but think how cool it would have been with a cigarette in his hand. The other touch I would have added is a snake with the head of Valeire Jarett, peaking through the foilage.Michelle's is truly abominable. If I were an Art teacher in high scool, it gets a B, in college it gets a C+, in the context of actually paying someone to do a portrain for this purpose, a D-.

From the Business Insider link from an earlier comment:"Amy, I want to thank you for so spectacularly capturing the grace, and beauty, and intelligence, and charm, and hotness of the woman that I love," Obama said, to laughs in the audience.

That is the advantage of a portrait. Sometimes you get lucky and an artist makes you better than you are. The only way that portrait looks like Michelle Obama is the sleevelessness of the dress. She wears sleeveless well. Not many of us can do that.

And yes, the Frank Underwood portrait is better than either of these. And that was just a prop for a TV show!

I thought both portraits were awful. Michelle doesn't look anything like herself while President's has weird perspective, when I first looked at I thought it was vine covered wall and Barack is somehow floating in air on a chair.

The comments re the 6 fingers intrigued me. Apparently something odd about his hands makes it look from certain angles as though he has 6 fingers (just google it). Cool that the artist may have decided to have fun with it. https://www.flickr.com/photos/bar-art/8439248657

His left hand may have started out as a right hand and the wedding band shifted over.Isn't there also something odd about how Obama and the chair do not quite match?Besides free-floating in the foliage?

"So the artist who painted Obama's portrait also painted this picture of a powerful black woman beheading a white woman."

This is a better painting than Obama's portrait, regardless of the subject. It is a striking and elegant pose, a face of character, and would not have shamed some 19th century Frenchman. The subject would be an Assyrian's head, of course, and he would have called it "Judith Beheading Holofernes".

Kennedy seems to be the first that doesn't match the others, but it is, at least, well done. After that it looks like everyone in America forgot how to paint, or no one could be found who could paint as well as artists of the past, with the possible exceptions of whoever did the portraits for Ford and Carter. Reagan's looks nothing like him at all.

"The "engaged and assertive demeanor" of Obama in his portrait "contradicts — and cosmetically corrects — the impression he often made in office of being philosophically detached from what was going on around him.""There has never been a substantive critique of Obama's persona from the Left. They had too much emotional involvement in his success as Obama the Black man to honestly assess his personality.For "philosophically detached" read "alienated." Obama was a person with only the most tenuous connection to mainstream American culture, and this connection was through the branch of academia and law that deals in civil rights. This is the branch most alienated from the American main stream identity. It is at war with those who are not alienated from American culture.When a person who is alienated from American society wants to change American society, he wants to change what "you" value, not what "we" value.The people who opposed Obama's policies were the real "resistance."Kim Davis, who resisted giving marriage certificates to same sex couples in Weat Virginia, is the real resistance. She is not attractive, she appeared on no awards shows, she was endlessly and cruelly mocked for her looks, her lack of education, and her religion. If you ever thought of giving a penny to the ACLU, remember that the ACLU wanted Davis removed from office, humiliated, and jailed if she refused to comply.

I think the likeness of Obama is good. Its too bad the artist liked painting the foliage more than the man. The foliage is loose and relaxed - not he though. The green has taking over the canvas, like a bad rash. And his shoes are not grounded. Go figure. Hello, this was a President!

Michelle must be fuming that her portrait does not look like her. I would be. She actually has very distinctive features and the artist did not find them. I love the dress though, and the overall simplicity of the portrait in general.

And, did he really say she was "hot"? Seriously - is he in high school? Let's keep the ego salves to yourselves. Honestly, its a show of maturity to keep those thoughts to yourself.

Kim Davis was in Kentucky but would have fit in my neighboring state of West Virginia. Lewis Wetzel's comment is otherwise dead on. She was the resistance and the ACLU had no interest in defending her. They had to virtue signal and found it especially easy to do when the collateral damage was a plain middle aged woman soon to be reclassified as a "deplorable."